Thomson Directories has become the first European directory publisher to sell advertising through the Google AdWords network.The multi-year deal means the Google AdWords network will include adverts from the ThomsonLocal.com and WebFinder.com sites.
[netimperative.com...]
interesting and smart move ... roll on local search market :)
Shak
Though it does remind me of that dot.bomb announcement of how some dot.bomb company claimed to have partnered with Amazon where in reality all it had really done was to become an Amazon associate.
Regards...jmcc
I hope not. One of my clients prints them :)
Thomson listings appearing on the AdWords network? or
Thomson reps selling AdWords to their customer base?
Thomson Local have webfinder that sells a managed package at 50p a click for all sorts of service-based categories. Minimum spend is £100 I think.
They have people and sites selling it under the recognised brand of Thomson Local but are struggling for traffic. Simple answer, pay google a lower CPC and pocket the rest.
Local businesses are difficult to sell to, I know as we tried for a while, with what was far better than the thomson offering but habits are hard to change.
I'll be watching this. It's a Local Search thing which will see major changes shortly.
a newbie and a first post but i may be able to give some insite on this as i worked for the above mentioned for 5 years.
Basically as already mentioned, Thomsons launched webfinder about 2 years ago so as to have a different offering from the other paper directories. Having already got thomsonlocal.com which works in a very similar way to yell.com etc. it was a new selling point and a new angle.
There are a number of different webfinder packages availble, the first being the variable deal which costs £250 and gives the customer an unlimited amount of keywords etc. to use and with the flexability to raise or lower the bid per key word at any time, much like any other ppc campign offering from other sites.
The fixed package they offer guarantees the customer 200 clicks to their site from webfinder or it's linked site partners. This deal costs £150 and again gives the customer £100 pound of 'click credit'
The main reason for the tie up with G is down to the number of customers in the field that were throwing back the excuse for not buying as 'i'm on google' or 'everyone uses google'
Now i've recently left the co. but have in front of me all the various sales blurb from a former collegue, essentially it says that they've 'partnered' with google to give customers 'the chance to appear on the front page of the worlds largest and best known search engine', however, this deal is fixed, you choose your keywords once and when the credit is gone they phone you for more money. It does seem to me to be a case of Thomsons becoming a reseller of add words.
The adds words are part of the deal, so whether the customers clicks get burned on webfinder or google, once the credit is gone it is gone.
As for are the paper directories dying out, probably not for a while yet, the usage has dropped which is why all the directories are trying to come with new ways to generate revenue, they probably have another 10 -15 years use left in them.
Look forward to being around and catching up with more of you
Iain
Thanks for the info and welcome to WebmasterWorld!
The people that the reps are usually sat in front of on a daily basis are SME, one man bands with a site built by a mate.
The rep will ask how much they paid for it, what an average job is worth to them and what their conversion rate is.
If it's a plumber then an average job is 2/300 and the conversion rate of contacts to job is about 1:4. When you suggest that for only £0.50 they can get an enquiry thats targeted, and then throw all their own figures at them it's very easy to make it look like a viable proposition, 4 clicks, 1 job, £2 spent, 2/300 profit!
Plus the fact that the customer probably hasn't got a clue how to promote a site anyway and you've got a sale.
When you also consider that they customers are being asked for very specific search terms to be used as well i.e include their local area name in the keyphrase it means that the min bid on G will be very low and the profit margin for Thomsons, huge.
Any way, thats only my opinion on it.
I broadly agree with M3Guy but think there are some massive obstacles when it comes to selling to small businesses and tradesmen in particular. Not least the amount of people that have had their fingers burned in the past. The perception is that the web isn't required by most tradesmen (they are often booked for months anyway) and many enquiries end up being useless.
As for 50p a sales lead, that's misleading because it's 50p a visitor. Conversion will not be 1/4 of visitors to the site.
It'll be interesting to see if they start signing up large publishers to add click potential. This could work very well if the revenue share and target sites were correct.
